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Friday, 29 July 2016

It’s a strange game, these days, writing fiction. There are the
joys of learning your craft, improving in tiny increments over the years.
Alongside that, a series of disillusions occur, like nasty little tales told by
the bigger children, about what will happen to you. Each of these either sends
you into retreat or makes you more determined, only grimly so.

As green writers of literary fiction, we are presented with a
kind of slough of despond to traipse through. Hardly any books of the kind you
are writing get published, we are told; it’s about luck more than quality; such
books sell in tiny numbers and are basically subsidised by the publisher’s
range of celebrity cookbooks; advances are trifling compared with genre fiction.
What are these books, then? Cheap window-dressing for publishing houses raking
it in on stocking-fillers, whilst pretending to be patrons of great writing?

That would, of course, be the most horribly cynical view. I
admit I’ve been there, in dark moments, wishing that somehow, I’d grown up to
write vampire-police-procedural-raunch-horror-teen-romances in tweet form (I’m
not ruling this out). It is true that I have had to ditch the now laughable
fantasy that most literary fiction writers can make their living almost
entirely from their books. I’ve also absorbed the news that things are even
worse for short stories; there may be the odd prize, but hardly anyone wants to
publish those tricky little monsters in a book, apparently.

All this is fine with me. It would be lovely, wouldn’t it,
if short stories were like diamonds not just in a metaphorical sense, but a
financial one. On the other hand, if I want to plough on with writing fiction
for its own sake, without worrying about the hourly rate for my toil, that’s up
to me. Millions of us do it, and are rewarded in myriad ways that do not have
to equate to coins.

I’ve worked quite hard at staying positive about writing. I’ve
checked in with myself often, asking, are you sure? Is this still worth it,
despite the latest bit of doomy news about your calling? After a while, you can
let all that stuff go. Probably, you need to, in order to get any blooming
writing done.

After all that, imagine my surprise when I found myself with
good news to share. The second surprise was that, now it was happening, I felt
shy about telling anyone, and especially my fellow writers. We’re all working so
hard, chipping away at those veins in the rock; we’re all at different depths,
different heights. In a way it was easier to be looking up in awe at the
professionals. The expectations were lower, there were many conspiratorial winks
to be shared.

But here it is: my first fiction book will be published by
Bloomsbury in early 2018. The dream has come true, and I am awfully happy.

I considered writing a post describing how this came about –
from my first wonky words to a real publishing deal. But there is no magic
formula to be distilled from such stories. Instead, I think it is best to hope,
to write, and see what happens. You never know.

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About Me

I am a writer, mainly of short stories, and those often with a folkloric bent. Some of these I write as part of my PhD in Creative Writing, at the University of Chichester. I am associate editor at The Word Factory, where I co-run a short story club, and I also run my own critique group for short story writers in London. Before all of that, I studied Philosophy for a long time, with an emphasis on philosophy of mind and rationality. I live in London and have a 'real' job as well as writing, but happily I reside by a little patch of woods which is all I need to keep me sane.